PhD student, John Innes Centre, UK
Bernice Waweru is currently pursuing a PhD in biological sciences in the Uauy lab at the John Innes Centre under the Norwich Research Park Doctoral Training Program (NRPDTP). Her research focuses on identifying and exploiting novel haplotypes for disease resistance in wheat. She implements bioinformatics skills to genomic sequence data to identify and utilize novel variation in the wheat genome linked to traits of interest, in this case disease resistance to rust diseases in wheat. Bernice acquired her Master of Science degree in plant breeding and technology at the University of Eldoret in Kenya. Her dissertation focussed on identifying genomic regions responsible for disease resistance to stem rust in wheat. During her masers she was awarded a Borlaug LEAP fellowship where she trained under Dr. Jim Anderson at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Sridhar Bhavani at CIMMYT and Dr. Godwin Macharia at KALRO. In 2018 she was awarded a highly competitive two-year Bioinformatics community of practise fellowship which included an eight-month residential fellowship at the then BecA-ILRI Hub, Nairobi. She previously worked as a bioinformatician at IITA and ILRI Nairobi hubs before moving on to pursue her PhD. Bernice enjoys reading and fitness and she is a wife and mother to two adorable kids.